As far back as the early 1970s, lawmakers, advocates and residents were decrying backlogged maintenance, deteriorating buildings and rising crime at public housing projects statewide.

Today, after years of little action, failed oversight and inadequate funding, the crisis has become increasingly acute, with an estimated $320 million in backlogged capital needs, more than 500 vacant units awaiting repairs and a host of emergency maintenance concerns, from no or intermittent hot water, to sewer lines that back up, to elevators that don't work.

"If something is reported to them to be repaired," said Petina Rios, a resident at Wahiawa Terrace, "they always give an excuse they don't have money."

The mounting issues — made more critical given the dearth of affordable housing in the Islands and that some 8,000 people are waiting to get into public housing — threaten to render public housing ineffective as a safety net for families facing homelessness and as a decent place for poor families to work their way out of poverty.

Calls for a comprehensive approach to tackling problems at the state's 83 public housing developments are not only coming from residents and lawmakers, but from social service providers and community leaders who say projects in the worst shape are poisonous to communities, attracting criminal elements and making community pride a hard thing to muster.

"I hate to see families in that kind of living condition," said state Sen. Suzanne Chun-Oakland, Human Services and Public Housing Committee chairwoman. "My commitment is to try to get something done. We need to take care of this resource."

In hopes of addressing the host of problems plaguing public housing, the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority recently embarked on a major "turnaround plan" — unlike anything the agency has attempted in its 73-year history — to clean up the projects, revamp vacant units, and streamline how applications are processed, apartments are filled once emptied and rent is collected.

The plan, to be a major subject of discussion at a legislative hearing Friday on the state of public housing in the Islands, includes shifting public housing workers into different departments to maximize efficiency, not accepting new applications for public housing for at least a year — though no date for the closure has been set— and setting up teams of employees to address the most severe problems, including exterior maintenance and collecting $1.7 million in late rent.

The authority is also studying several models from the Mainland for redeveloping projects with the greatest needs, including one model that would require little public funding and is designed to preserve the affordability of public housing units, while adding slightly-below market or market-level rentals. The agency plans to bring in a consultant to study the rehab schemes.

"We're trying to get to a point where our heads are above water long enough where we begin thinking about the future," said Travis Thompson, Hawai'i Public Housing Authority board chairman. "If your house is on fire, you've got to put that fire out first."

turnaround plan

For policymakers and advocates, the turnaround plan is welcome relief after a years-long drought of optimism that public housing would ever get the major overhaul many believed it needed. But at the same time, nobody appears to be getting their hopes up too high, especially considering that the HPHA board and executive director Chad Taniguchi are trying to revamp public housing while facing a $4 million deficit, a dwindling federal subsidy and a tight state budget.

Clarissa Hosino, an HPHA board member and resident at the Kalanihuia housing project in Chinatown, said the turnaround plan will only work if public housing tenants let policymakers know that rehabilitating public housing is a priority.

"I really think it it has a lot to do with the support you have from your residents and from your community," Hosino said. "They need to come out and be ... a voice for the changes they want to see."

For HPHA, the turnaround plan is the result of more than a year of planning — and studying what other housing authorities do. Taniguchi, who became executive director in May 2007, said the plan is designed to stabilize the housing authority so that it can begin to think about potential models for larger-scale rehabilitation projects. He added he is confident that the plan will make a real difference in how the public housing authority is run and how projects are managed.

But he acknowledged the housing authority doesn't have a good track record when it comes to fixing long-standing concerns, and said it could take at least another year for people to see real change.

"It's not going to happen overnight," he said.

To be sure, this is not the first time the housing authority has tried to revamp the public housing system in the Islands.

In 1998, for example, then-executive director David Lau wrote in the Hawai'i Housing Authority annual report that he was hopeful about the prospects of a project designed to renovate units and make widescale repairs, foster self-sufficiency with job and life skills training and tamp down crime with a drug elimination program.

In 2004, after the federal government labeled the Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawai'i — later renamed Hawai'i Public Housing Authority — a "troubled" public housing agency, a massive action plan was put into place to deal with 120 problem areas, including vacant units, rent collection and building repairs. Though the plan was able to lift the agency out of troubled status after a year, it didn't succeed in eliminating many of the problems it set out to address. If anything, some of those problems have worsened.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development currently lists the authority as a "standard" performer.

"HPHA understands very well that its primary objective is to provide affordable housing that is decent, safe and sanitary," said Michael Flores, director of the Honolulu HUD office. "That means that HPHA has to focus on the filling of all vacant units and ensuring that all units are in acceptable physical condition."

funding shortfall

Most public housing projects in the Islands are in fair to poor shape, though some are relatively problem-free, officials point out. In federal inspections of projects last year, 11 of the 65 federal housing projects failed, getting a score of 59 or below out of a possible 100, and about one-third received a score of 69 or below.

Hawai'i's issues with public housing pale compared with some major Mainland cities, which are in the midst of trying to figure out how to deal with rows and rows of crime-ridden, crumbling public housing highrises. But consider: More than 20,000 Hawai'i residents call state or federally subsidized public housing projects home in dozens of communities around the state, making the Hawai'i Public Housing Authority by far the single-largest owner of affordable housing in the state — and landlord for nearly 2 percent of the state's population.

And though some charge that public housing in the Islands has turned out to be an incredible black hole of resources, advocates counter that building an all-new affordable housing inventory or tackling the problems that would arise if public housing weren't available (including, conceivably, more homelessness) would almost certainly be more costly and less cost-effective.

Advocates also point out Hawai'i is not alone in struggling with a shrinking purse and a growing list of needs.

Across the country, public housing authorities are grappling with aging projects whose operations and upkeep increasingly outpace federal and local funding. Every fiscal year since 2003, federal appropriations for public housing operating subsidies have fallen short of projected needs based on federal calculations, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials reports.

The gap was 5.3 percent in 2003. By 2007, it had grown to 18.1 percent.

To make up for the shortfalls, housing authorities are being forced to lay off employees, scale back on services and dip into capital improvement dollars to pay the bills for day-to-day operations.

Michael Kelly, president of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, of which Hawai'i could be, but is not, a member, said the underfunding — or so-called "disinvestment" — is threatening to cripple public housing as the nation knows it.

Reach Mary Vorsino at mvorsino@honoluluadvertiser.com.